Author Hour: Natural World sponsored by Friends of the Blue Ridge

Stone Soup Books is excited to continue our Author Hour Series with The Natural World sponsored by Friends of the Blue Ridge. Following our Plant Grateful event, we will host we local authors to discuss a variety of natural world topics including permaculture, connecting with the world around us, and our impact on the land and those with whom we share it. Please join us for this special conversation.

• weather permitting this event will be outside

• books available for purchase at event

• go to stonesoupbooks.net for more information

• BRING YOUR OWN CHAIRS! We hope this will be an outside event.

Seasons of a Wild Life is an intimate journey through the seasons of the year and a love letter to our diverse and ancient human-nature interactions. Naber shares her stewardship, practices and daily lessons from the plants, wildlife, and weather on her farm in the Virginia Highlands, interspersing these with mytho-spiritual stories of nature deities, animal symbology, and seasonal festivities from cultures around the world. Part journal, part guidebook, Seasons of a Wild Life is a treasury of naturalist observations, ancestral wisdom, and herbal remedies. Journaling prompts at the end of each chapter will inspire you to closely attend to the rhythms of nature in your own environment and deepen your personal connection to nature.

About the author:

Annette Naber, Ph.D. left a successful psychology career in Washington DC to

become a homesteader and land steward in the Virginia Highlands. Beyond her personal commitment to rewild and to live lightly on the earth, she helps others reconnect to nature through forest bathing, foraging classes, and retreats. Seasons of a Wild Life is her first book.

Mulberries in the Rain:The plants in our world not only nourish and sustain us, they also root us within our human and ecological communities. Mulberries in the Rain explores these vital connections, combining evocative storytelling with detailed crop profiles, accessible growing guides, and permaculture design tools to mentor and inspire. Central to permaculture is the art of creating beneficial relationships—crafting inherently regenerative food systems modeled on nature. As growers, we tend to interpret this idea literally—think companion planting, edible ecosystems, and food forests.

*At this event only, when purchasing a copy of Mulberries in the Rain, you can receive a free plant to add to your own garden. While supplies last.

About the authors:

Ryan Blosser is a farmer, educator, permaculture designer, writer, and mental health professional. He is co-founder of the Shenandoah Permaculture Institute and owner/operator of Dancing Star Farm. In addition, he holds a teaching license in the State of Virginia and earned an MA and Ed.S. in clinical mental health counseling from James Madison University. Ryan served as Executive Director of Project GROWS, an educational non-profit farm dedicated to growing healthy communities. He also taught permaculture design and gardening in Staunton Public Schools before accepting a position with Waynesboro School, where he directs the continued development of the Waynesboro Education Farm. The intersection of his twin passions for growing food and helping people fuels his unique perspective on building community health and resilience through permaculture design. Ryan lives in Churchville, VA.

Trevor Piersol is a farmer, permaculture designer, and educator. He is co-founder of the Shenandoah Permaculture Institute and owner/operator of Wild Rose Orchard, a diversified pick-your-own orchard and nursery. Trevor is dedicated to the advancement of regenerative agriculture with a particular focus on perennial fruits, medicinal herbs, and easy-care native plants. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and is a graduate of Allegheny Mountain Institute’s Food and Farming fellowship. A longtime self-confessed “plant geek” who loves spending time in the forests of Appalachia, foraging, wild crafting, and continually learning from nature, Trevor has been practicing, teaching, and writing about Permaculture Design since 2012. He lives in Mount Sidney, VA.

The Age of Deer: Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the 21st century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story,

in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests. Delving into the historical roots of these tangled attitudes and how they play out in the present, Erika Howsare observes scientists capture and collar fawns, hunters show off their trophies, a museum interpreter teaching American history while tanning a deer hide, an animal-control officer collecting the carcasses of deer killed by sharpshooters, and a woman bottle-raising orphaned fawns in her backyard. As she reports these stories, Howsare’s eye is always on the bigger picture: Why do we look at deer in the ways we do, and what do these animals reveal about human involvement in the natural world? For readers of H is for Hawk and Fox & I, The Age of Deer offers a unique andintimate perspective on a very human relationship.

About the author: Erika Howsare holds an MFA in literary arts from Brown University and has published two books of poetry. She also worked in local journalism for twenty years, covering culture and environmental issues. She teaches writing and contributes reviews and essays to various national outlets. A native of Pennsylvania, she lives in rural Virginia.